The Newsroom season premiere recap: 'Boston'

November 10, 2014 3:00 AM

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Let's start with the 800-pound gorilla in the room: During its two 10-episode seasons on HBO, The Newsroom was plagued with pretentiousness, embarrassing portrayals of women, and an exhaustive use of expository monologues when one or two sentences would have sufficed. Sadly, replacing the Aaron Sorkin-created drama with a one-man show about Sam Waterston's perpetually drunk, old-school newsman Charlie Skinner wasn't an option, so instead, The Newsroom is being allowed to die a slow death with an abbreviated third and final season in which not enough has changed.

The female characters remain poorly written, maybe not as badly as in the past, but the extreme shifts from brilliant to blithering idiot (see: McHale, MacKenzie, under "bridezilla") are still there and are still inexcusable. And while the show has been strong enough to allow us to develop feelings ...